You will by now have understood that I have a morbid fascination with this subject, I do wonder myself if it is entirely healthy, it's a period when monsters roamed the world and I just cannot comprehend how they contrived to wield such power and perform such atrocities and why supposedly sane and respected people aided and abetted them.

Then I have a listen to Brown's (Stalin? He wishes.) latest tiptoe along the edge of sanity, I reckon Mandelson to be Goebbels with aspirations to be Beria, rest of the bunch are nodding apparatchiks long overdue a purge and you kind of get an inkling how it could all slide together with a world class and charismatic nutter at the helm.